


Sunfaded

by shobogan



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Jossverse
Genre: Ficlet Collection, Genderqueer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-14
Updated: 2013-11-14
Packaged: 2018-01-01 14:06:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1044832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shobogan/pseuds/shobogan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snapshots of life near the mouth of Hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Illumination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dawn figures something out.

She used to think the monks just forgot. 

They gave her a form, and a face, and a voice; they gave her a life and a family and a name. 

But they did not make her Joyce's daughter, or Buffy's sister. The words always felt brittle in her mouth, like they'd shatter and cut if she held them too long.

She knows now why her body feels too tight sometimes; why she feels trapped in her own skin. She doesn't know why nothing makes her figure look right in the mirror.

Nothing she reads tells her why. There's nothing in the tomes Giles lends her, or the stories Tara left behind. No one knows how mystic energy given human form is meant to identify. No one, probably, has ever asked.

She turns to other books, then. Books about people. She reads, and talks, and learns. She shapes her own identity as the Order shaped her body.

She is Dawn Summers. She is the Key. She is a witch. She is a Watcher. 

She is not a girl, and that's okay.


	2. Ashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kate slays her first nightmare.

She holds the wood so tightly it tears the skin of her palms, jagged timber biting into hands already scraped and slick and aching. Head and heart pound in harsh dissonance, stealing thought and breath and precious time. Her eyes are fixed on his, dark and deep, resignation and determination.

Kate doesn't know what he wants her to do, and she doesn't really care. She steps forward and draws her arms back because the killing has to end and this is the only way to stop it.

No justice, no closure, just broken wood sliding through dead flesh. 

It's slow and rough and sickening, and then he's standing there alone, cloaked in dust and blood and agony. His bastard son said her fear would taste sweet; his death is acrid and bitter on her tongue.

Her hands fall to her sides, raw and empty. For a moment they simply watch each other, shock and wariness binding them in silence. When he finally speaks, his voice is hoarse but even.

"You missed."

Her words are coldly steady and tightly controlled, an acute contrast to her own wide eyes and heaving chest. 

"No. I didn't."

She yanks the board out of him and tosses it to the floor, watching stoically as he collapses, cradling his bleeding stomach and not making a sound.

Then she sinks down beside him, drawing her knees up and resting her forehead against them.

She killed a vampire. A fairytale, a nightmare, a murderer.

She's lost and tired and battered, choked by grief and anger, drowning in knowledge she doesn't want - but she can't help but feel satisfied.

Reggie Sparks. Jinny Markem. Jessica Halpren. Alicia Benton.

They've been avenged, and no one will ever die like them again.


	3. Rhythm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Good triumphs, and Jenny finds herself on the dance floor with a vampire.

_"We saved the world. I say we party."_

The Bronze is bright and loud, decorations glittering and swaying, full of people who have no idea what was averted tonight. 

She has glimpsed hell, and now she is dancing with the dead.

Well, not quite.

They're all together on the dance floor, some moving with the music, some sipping spiked punch, one trying desperately to be a rather awkward shadow.

She wants to get lost in the heat and the rhythm, revel in the familiar simplicity of it all, be a normal teacher at a normal dance with a normal librarian smiling nervously at her as if she doesn't notice, but she can't. Not quite. Not with the sworn enemy of her clan right there beside her, acting like a timid schoolboy.

Scarcely an hour ago he helped save them all.

"Something wrong?" His voice is so soft, so tentative, and she can't help but smile even as the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She's been watching him, of course she has, but from a distance; this is new.

"No. Yeah." Her face is flushed with anxiety, and something like guilt – for lying to a vampire. She's been in California for far too long.

"I know the feeling." His eyes and thoughts go to Buffy, in her beautiful dress, surrounded by her friends, dancing in the light.

It's easy to gesture towards them. Stupid, ludicrous, downright treacherous maybe, but easy. "Go. Dance with her." Conflicted, embarrassed, uncertain, and damn if he doesn't remind her of Rupert right now. 

Fine. She'll get them both to dance.


End file.
